Thursday, August 10, 2017

Google chose a side in the culture war

For alt-right activists, who occupy the rightmost flanks of a powerful conservative internet subculture, Google’s response to Mr. Damore’s memo was low-hanging fruit for mockery. But there is another reason that the alt-right’s opposition campaign appeared so quickly, with such well-practiced maneuvers.

For the last several months, far-right activists have mounted an aggressive political campaign against some of Silicon Valley’s biggest players. Extending their attacks beyond social networks like Facebook and Twitter, tech’s typical free-speech battlegrounds, they have accused a long list of companies, including Airbnb, PayPal and Patreon, of censoring right-wing views, and have pledged to expose Silicon Valley for what they say is a pervasive, industrywide liberal bias. ...

It’s unlikely that any alt-right protest will make a dent in the bottom lines of multibillion-dollar Silicon Valley behemoths. But by forcing these companies to take sides in an emerging culture war, these activists have already achieved a kind of perverse goal. They have found a new punching bag, and they have proved that in the hyper-polarized Trump era, there is no such thing as neutrality.

This last paragraph is very strange. Nothing in the article suggests that the alt-right wanted Google or any other Si Valley company to take sides in the culture war, or that Google wants to be neutral. Google has aligned itself with the Ctrl-Left. I am sure that the Alt-Right would prefer that Google remained neutral, so that all opinions are available on YouTube.

Google claims to promote diversity, inclusiveness, and tolerance. But it, and other tech companies, have declared war on Republicans, Alt-Right, and anyone else opposed to their Ctrl-Left agenda.